Workville Member Spotlight: George Popescu of Lampix VR/AR

At Workville we are extremely excited about the future uses of virtual reality and augmented reality. There’s so much potential! And one company on the forefront of this new technology is Workville’s own Lampix. Lampix transforms any surface into a smart surface.

Recently, we chatted with Lampix CEO, George Popescu, about the future of this incredible technology and how companies like his are leading the VR/AR revolution.

Having just launched a year and a half ago, the whole concept was to make something that would allow someone to work with paper and surfaces the same way that we work with electronic documents. “My co-founder just imagined it,” George Popescu says. “He gave a talk at TEDx about User Interfaces of the future and built Lampix.”

Last March, Lampix won the 2017 SXSW Accelerator Pitch Competition for Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality.

Of course, they quickly realized there was so much more to this product. “I engaged with Mihai Dumitrescu, our CTO and our other co-founder early, before he had a fully working Lampix,” Popescu says. “So we built it together. My role is the business side.”

Popescu, is Romanian, raised in France, and now living in NYC. Having such a worldview of business and entrepreneurship is extremely valuable. “Romania is very dynamic and entrepreneurs are very innovative and imaginative, also very technical which means they create real value,” he says. “But they are struggling with resources of all types. But it’s improving fast. France is also very dynamic. The problem there is the mentality, people see obstacles and people are risk-averse. The United States has no comparison in the entire world. People like taking risks and trying to win big. That is the main component in entrepreneurship. And entrepreneurs are also taken seriously.”

With three Master’s Degrees, Popescu isn’t exactly an example of a this often celebrated avatar of the self-taught, lean entrepreneur. He truly believes in formal education. “I think it’s more and more necessary,” he says. “It gives you a base of knowledge and a a core piece that is necessary no matter what you do. You hardly use what you learn in college but that’s not the point. You had to learn how to read, yes? Same thing, if you don’t know basics about anything it’s like not knowing how to read.”

And certainly VR/AR will disrupt and improve the educational experience, among other industries. “Entertainment, training, shopping, collaboration…” Popescu says. “I think VR is for isolated experiences in your basement. I think AR is for experiences in your living room, dining, room, kitchen , shops, factories, everywhere.”

As the CEO of a tech startup, working at NYC’s Workville coworking space in midtown Manhattan, what does it take to get off the ground and up and running?

“Find a customer first,” Popescu says. “Someone who is ready to pay for your product or service. If they are not willing to pay, they don’t need it. And while it’s nice to try to guess what they can pay for, that is not enough. You need to have in hand an email or paper that says ‘If you have that, I’ll buy it for X.’”

Lampix certainly has proven they have that product. And they continue to explore its versatility from their office space at Workville NYC. “I like the location and the relaxed attitude of the Workville team: can do, will do, easy, and no pressure,” Popescu says. “Other companies like WeWork have a pressure sales attitude that turned me off.”

If he’s not in the office fielding inquiries and developing partnerships with Fortune 500 companies, you may find him at Lan Sheng on 36th Street. It seems that many Workville coworking and startup members enjoy Lan Sheng!